March in St. Louis County draws hundreds Saturday as part of a nationwide protest

This story was originally published by St. Louis Public Radio.

Demonstrations over the death of a Minneapolis man shifted Saturday to St. Louis County, where protests over police treatment of black people gained international focus five years ago, after the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

People gathered by the hundreds in Clayton and blocked traffic as they marched down Forest Park Parkway to University City. Another protest is planned in Ferguson this evening.

The march was part of a string of protests nationwide that sprung up this week after a video of a police officer kneeling for several minutes on the neck of George Floyd shocked the nation. Floyd could be heard saying he couldn’t breathe and soon died. The officer was fired earlier this week and charged with murder and manslaughter Friday.

The afternoon march began at the St. Louis County Justice Center in Clayton. It featured a condemnation of violence against African Americans over the past few weeks, most notably Floyd’s death.

“We are here because of what happened in Minneapolis, but there have been many killings around this country by police officers,” said the Rev. Daryl Gray. “Not just in recent days, weeks and months. But throughout the years.”

The multiracial crowd marched through the streets of Clayton, and then streamed onto Forest Park Parkway. They chanted, banged drums and held up signs decrying the deaths of black people killed by police. Demonstrators eventually made it to University City, where they marched through the Loop business district. The crowd dispersed close to Washington University.

Gray noted that the St. Louis area “became the epicenter for civil rights because of Mike Brown,” a reference to the protest movement that emerged in 2014 after a Ferguson police officer killed the 18-year-old.

A number of speakers at Saturday afternoon’s rally took part in the protest movement in Ferguson, including state Rep. Rasheen Aldridge, D-St. Louis.

“How many more bodies do we got to see?” Aldridge said. “We are tired. It’s a simple message. It’s not hard to understand. We are tired of people of our color being killed in our streets by police brutality. No justice is ever served.”

The Clayton protests came a day after hundreds of people marched in downtown St. Louis to protest Floyd’s death. Demonstrators blocked traffic on Interstate 70. Sgt. Keith Barrett of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said a man was killed after he climbed onto a truck and was run over by a trailer tire. Barrett added that police didn’t make any arrests.

County officials reflect on Floyd’s death

The impending protests were on the minds of several of St. Louis County’s elected officials, including County Executive Sam Page.

In a press conference Friday, Page said that when “our police officers don’t meet our standards, we expect them to be held accountable — that’s the message we’ve always had for the community.”

“If people want to protest peacefully, I’m sure that we will support that — and we will provide them with the support that they need,” Page said. “But if that turns into something that’s less constructive, then we’ll react appropriately. I’ll leave that to our county municipal police departments. We are certainly monitoring the situation and we will continue to do so.”

Page called the video of Floyd “horrifying” and went on to say that “we hope that we can learn from what is clearly a tragic event and that we can move forward as a community and a country.”

During an appearance Friday on the Politically Speaking podcast, Councilwoman Kelli Dunaway said she expected a different approach from the St. Louis County Police Department from how it handled the Ferguson protests in 2014. She pointed to the department having a new chief, Mary Barton, and a different police board.

“I want to see our law enforcement standing with our protesters,” said Dunaway, D-Chesterfield. “This is not who we are. This is not who we’re going to be. We learned. And we’re still learning. And we’re going to continue to get better new leadership.”

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